How To Make Butter In Under 5 Minutes!

How To Make Butter In Under 5 Minutes!

When I first researched making butter, I truly thought the butter would be A) hard to make and B) taste terrible. Both of these hypotheses were incorrect.

This recipe is truly easy and the quality of butter is really unlike any I’ve tasted. All you really need is a stand mixer. A hand mixer will do but won’t be nearly as easy, although many of the posts I read called for shaking cream in a jar to make butter…Yeah. A huh. I kid you not.

Pour cream and salt into bowl of stand mixer and mix on high. In essence, you’ll be making whipped cream….only you’re going to whip the cream beyond this point. About 3 minutes.

Soon it will deflate and start to look like scrambled eggs. Keep beating a few more seconds. You’ll notice water start to separate from the butter. This is actually buttermilk and can be saved for future use.

Once buttermilk forms, remove bowl from stand mixer and fill bowl with cold, running water. With your hands, squeeze the butter together to form a ball. Keep massaging the ball of butter under cold water until the water runs clear. This will assure that all the buttermilk is removed and that your butter will stay fresh longer. Once water runs clear, remove ball-o-butter from bowl and wrap in parchment paper and chill in refrigerator, or slather on some toasted bread like I did!

You sure can – and very nice it is too. it tasts somehow less rich and slithery than 'normal' butter. It's sharper – fresher. The challange would be to find the goat's cream to make it with though! In my experience, goat's butter is more common in the shops (ie. one or two shops actually sell it!) than goat's cream, which i only remember seeing once in my life!

The issue with goat's milk (as I've heard it) is that its fat molecules are 1/5 the size of fat molecules in cows milk. This means it doesn't seperate naturally into goat's milk and goat's cream. I think that you can use a centrifuge to seperate out the "cream" and go from there.

Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful recipe. Could you please let us know long the homemade butter can be stored in the refrigerator without tasting less good/going bad? Incidentally I just found out that valbresso feta, my current favorite cheese, keeps longer if you put it in salt water and change the salt water once a week. Thanks, Becky (one of the masses finding you via Lifehacker today!)

The "buttermilk" that forms when making butter is not the buttermilk that is called for in recipies like biscuts and fried chicken. That buttermilk is regular milk that has been inoculated with lactic acid producint bacteria. They are in no way interchangeable. The "buttermilk" that is produced when making butter is pretty much useless culinarily.

Having grown up on a farm, this is about the most amusing thing I've read today. OMG! You've figured out how to make butter! How.. Amazing! The leftovers aren't what you know as buttermilk, btw. Most of you know cultured buttermilk. Traditional buttermilk is closer in texture/flavor to whey.

sparklyunicorn, I think it depends on how sweet you want it. I would start with 2 tablespoons of honey and add more from there if need be.

Anonymous, I've never tried a cheesecloth but I imagine it would work…you could also try using the paddle attachment on a stand mixer and adding ice cold water…mix and dump the water…repeat until the water runs clear.

I just read your 20K hit article on this post. I am glad you shared it. That will help most of the bloggers in promoting their food blogs. And your recipe for making butter was really simple yet great.

FYI–I think the glass jar method is much simpler and less cleanup—-probably faster, too!

I took a 32 oz glass applesauce jar with a lid and poured in a pint of chilled heavy whipping cream and a clean rock from our beach (cleaned it with vinegar) . The rock was round and small, about the size of a robin's egg.

Shake for about 3 minutes vigoursly–the kids helped with this. You'll hear the rock bouncing around! Suddenly, at about the 4 minute mark, you won't be able to shake it anymore. Lifting the lid reveals perfect heavy whipped cream.

I put this into a wooden salad bowl (large) and then take a fork and mash it around–it will look like the scrambled eggs as described. Keep fluffing and pushing it around with a fork and suddenly you'll notice the buttermilk (traditional) coming off nicely. Squish the butter up against sides of bowl to remove more milk; pour off milk into a container*. Continue to press butter against side and voila–you're done. Simple!

I dont' rinse my butter as we use it too quickly. This pint yields about a 1/2 cup of stick of butter. After butter is formed, I sprinkle it with a little sea salt and then use two clean knives to form in into a "stick" of butter and refridgerate it. It will probably last only a few days on toast, baking ,etc. here!

*Leftover buttermilk is technically NOT whey; contrary to what is posted above it is great to use in baking or even as a beverage and is called mattha and very popular in mideastern cuisine. A google search reveals many uses for this mattha.

The term 'buttermilk' can refer to lots of different dairy drinks, but is decidedly different than cultured buttermilk (if you think anything you buy in a regular grocery store is the same as what can be made or grown at home you are fooling yourself). It is called 'buttermilk' because it was originally the milky liquid leftover from churning butter. 'Whey' is the liquid leftover from cheesemaking, they are different. And 'mattha' is the liquid, or beverages that use the liquid, leftover from making yoghurt (common in the mideast and India).

And to previous Anonymous: many people who do a lot of baking or cooking already own a "$300 dollar mixer" (your use of the work 'dollar' is redundant, btw).

I would always suggest using fresh cream from a local farm if you can get it. And besides using honey, homemade butter is great with the addition of blueberries or raspberries. Just remember, when you make foods at home you know what's in it!

Thanks for the butter tidbits, and picture. I'm a visual learner and need the photos. I'm going to buy cream today!

We've been experimenting with making a lot of our own foods lately. Our own "canned" chicken (using a pressure canner), jellies, jams, peach butter, applesauce. And the newest discover: homemade mayo! It trumps the store bought stuff like a jock on a nerd!

I had some cream and no use for it and am so happy to have found your site. I agree that the pictures and descriptions are really helpful. I can't believe that making fresh butter with my mixer was SO easy 🙂

ok, why are we not taught this simple task of making butter at grade school?! I am 38 years old and just discovered accidentally how to make butter. (I forgot my standing mixer was beating away the heavy cream of which I was only trying to make into whipped cream). Amazing little find

Just made this with my stand mixer and I'm so proud! I'm fully domesticated now: I 'churned' butter 🙂 I used Strauss Family Creamery whipping cream (its important to use non-homogenized milk) with some Kosher salt and strained the milk with cheesecloth. Yay! So delish 🙂

put cream into a food processor, let it run for a couple minutes, add some salt, let it run a bit more. there's also no "buttermilk" run off. (which no, I do not sure for cooking purposes- I make buttermilk or get the powdered mix)

butter is simplistic- baby food jars work great when teaching children how to make it.

Does it make a difference if the Heavy Whipping Cream in "Ultra-pasturized". Once site said don't use the ultra pasturized. I purchased this kind to use with the preschool kids tomorrow. Can anyone answer this before 8:30am tomorrow? Also other sites mentioned leaving the cream at room temperature for 12 hours before breaking it down into butter. Anyone have experience with this method?

Excellent recipe / tutorial! Just made fresh butter for a holiday gathering in Boston. It came out great and added a personal touch to our event. Our guests couldn't stop talking about it (and asking for the link to this site so they could try!). Thanks for all the help and for the great instructions.

I have been making butter by hand for quite a while now, and now at 7 months pregnant, my unborn doesn't like the "shaking of the jar" LOL My two older ones can't sit still long enough to help much. I have been looking for a butter churn and WOW they are expensive. My guess is that most people are simply collecting them now. What a shame that they aren't using them! Thanks for this article and the commentary…I now know I can spare my unborn the shaking and use my stand mixer.

I have noticed that since I have been making my own butter it disappears almost three times as fast as the store bought stuff EVER did. I'm a healthy cook, we don't use alot of oil or fried or things like that. But somehow every thing just HAS to have a little butter on it…..LOL

Hey boys and girls just wanted to say you DO NOT need a stand mixer for this (it's stated right in the post you snarky little monkies you). I have made butter just fine with a hand mixer many many times and my Grams could actually use a regular whisk (forearms like Popeye FTW) It does take a bit longer and I recommend using a LARGE mixing bowl set in the sink to make things easier. The key is to keep everything cold cold cold. Chill everything cream, bowl, mixer blades and all. The longer you can keep everything cold the faster the butter forms as it helps to keep the milk fats solid and easier to bind together. Take the butter ball that has formed and wrap it in several layers of cheesecloth and sqeeze it as tightly as you can by grabbing the tails of the cloth and spinning the ball to tighten. As for the remaining "buttermilk" try adding some artifical sweetener like Truvia or Splenda to it and pouring it over cereal instead of milk. It is basically skim milk at this point anyway. For a special treat take the butter you just made add it back to your stand mixer and add a pinch of kosher or sea salt finely minced garlic and parsley for a compound butter that will knock your socks off.

thanks for the website. Just started buying milk from Amish farmer. It's about 12%cream on top! Cant wait to make my own butter. Stand mixer will not be used because I don't use electric appliances. Whisk or canning jar to shake works fine. Less cleanup. Never wears out. and you know what to do if the electricity goes out. I aleeady make my own bread and yogurt and everything else I can from scratch. It doesn't take much time when you get used to it. Everything is better and healthier.

Oh we used to make butter by shaking a mason jar all the time as kids (in the 80's in a major city- not on a farm in the 50's). It's actually quite easy if you have two people to trade turn shaking. Of course a stand mixer must be much easier. But if you have kids around (or want to feel like a kid), it really is quite fast in a regular ole mason jar.

Yes, shaking a jar is fun! You can also roll the jar across the floor or attach it to a rocking chair and rock (all day;D). If you want to make butter on a regular basis, this method is much easier. I have friends who make butter in their blenders. Butter from RAW ORGANIC COW OR GOAT MILK is amazingly healthy and will help you avoid all the junk in commercial butter. Also, pasteurized butter lacks the enzymes and vitamin content that make butter so good for you and easy to digest. It's worth the effort to find raw milk. Many cases of acne and eczema will disappear if you cut out commercial pasteurized milk. Now…why don't we learn THAT in school?

I have been looking for a home made spreadable butter that still tastes like butter. How is this for spreading after being refridgerated? Is is like store bought butter….hard as a rock? I can't wait to try this recipe but was just wondering 🙂ThanksK

My mother used to put fresh cream (separated from fresh cow's milk) in a mason jar and put it in the back window of our Chevy. She would drive to town for groceries and by the time she got home we had butter. The sun through the window warmed the cream.

I use my food processor to make butter, fast and easy too! If more people realized that margarine was one molecule off of being plastic, they would take the 10 minutes of time to make their own butter.

You can use a blender, too. Eliminates the spatter. If the cream is brought to room temperature, this takes less than a minute to turn to butter. It can then be easily poured through a cheese cloth to drain off the buttermilk.

I made this yesterday. I started using a blender but mine is just too old, probably, because when it became cream the blades didn't move at all… so I went and got my hand mixer because my stand mixer isn't a kitchen-aid, and it doesn't have a splatter guard, but I have one I can put on my hand mixer…

Hello all. Great butter method using the standmixer, I used to use the mason jar with lid method until I stumbled onto this website. Sure it is not for the purist or those seeking exercise for everything they do, but a half pound of butter can be churned in about 15 minutes on high speed using Artisan by KitchenAid. This much butter came from a quart of regular dairy cream. Also I let the butter fly until minute 17 or 18 when all of the sudden to my amazement, the butter stuck to the whisk and I literally lifted the butter from the buttermilk. Made the rinse part easier. Just a practical hint.